CFP: Feeling, Valuing, and Judging: Phenomenological Investigations in Axiology

Call for Abstracts

Feelings, values, and judgements all played central roles in the philosophical writings of the early phenomenologists - from their discussions of formalism in ethics, to social ontology, the phenomenology of moods and emotions, and even the phenomenology of religion. Though heavily inspired by the work of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler and the Munich phenomenologists conceived phenomenology as less a method and more an attitude, and developed their phenomenological investigations accordingly. With the phenomenological attitude, the meaning of the object of cognition is revealed. Doxic, volitional, and affective intentional attitudes gives rise to phenomenological descriptions of the world in terms of its meaning and value. Understood in this way, the early phenomenologists saw questions of value as arising alongside questions of ontology.

The theme of this conference will be phenomenological studies in axiology (ethics and aesthetics), and will look at the relationship of intuition, the emotions, and intersubjectivity to acts of feeling, valuing, and judging. Topics include phenomenological theories of valuation, the departure of later phenomenologists from Husserl’s and Brentano’s distinctions of types of mental phenomena, axiological properties of intentional objects, the self as a member of a community, sympathy and empathy, criteria for correct and incorrect value judgements, the difference between axiological and ontic characteristics and fact-value differentiation, axiology in universals and particulars, judgments of value and the role of implicit beliefs, phenomenological descriptions of striving, volition, emotions, moods, the beautiful and the sublime, etc. We encourage papers on the work of Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Theodor Lipps, Max Scheler, Alexander Pfänder, Moritz Geiger, Josef Geyser, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Siegfried Hamburger, Nicolai Hartmann, Waldemar Conrad, Aurel Kolnai, Roman Ingarden, Edith Stein, Emmanuel Levinas, Hans Reiner, and others. We are also interested in papers proposing original phenomenological descriptions of emotions, feelings, volition, and judgments that follow the phenomenological tradition, and build upon these historical antecedents in new and interesting ways.

Abstracts should be 500-700 words, and include a short bibliography of primary and secondary sources.  All abstracts must be prepared for blind review and sent via email in .doc or .docx format to Dr. Rodney Parker at: ([email protected]).

Both senior researchers and graduate students are encouraged to submit.